Incarnation & metamorphosis : can literature change us?
Title:
Incarnation & metamorphosis : can literature change us?
Author:
Mason, David, 1954- author.
ISBN:
9781589881723
Personal Author:
Edition:
First Paul Dry Books edition.
Physical Description:
226 pages ; 22 cm
Contents:
Introduction -- Part One: The Way of Literature -- Incarnation and Metamorphosis: an essay in metaphors -- At Home in the Imaginal -- The Minefield and the Soul: notes on identity and literature -- Poet and Moralist: Claudia Rankine and Kay Ryan -- Daughters of Memory: the sibling rivalry of history and poetry -- Beloved Immoralist: one man's love of a fictional character -- Part Two: Voices, Dead and Living -- The Freedom of Montaigne -- Digging Up Diderot -- Neruda's voice -- The Perils of Fame: Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney -- Homage to Tom Stoppard -- Two Poet-Critics: Clive James and John Burnside -- The Searching Stories of Helen Garner -- Robert Stone and American Wreckage -- The Inner Exile of Dana Gioia -- "The song is drowned": Michael Donaghy.
Abstract:
'"Literary criticism," David Mason writes, "ought to entertain as well as illuminate." In these essays Mason tells stories about embodiment and change, incarnation and metamorphosis, drawing connections between art and life without confusing the two. Mason considers the many kinds of change we encounter in our lives, our desire for justice, and the ways great writers complicate that desire. He discusses the lives and works of Montaigne, Diderot, and Neruda, as well as his colorful father's fascination with a fictional character. He takes up such contemporary figures as the daring Australian writer Helen Garner, the playwright Tom Stoppard, and the poet-critic Dana Gioia; and he has fresh things to say about the perils of fame in the careers of Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney and mourns the loss of poet Michael Donaghy. Incarnation & Metamorphosis is a book about living with literature--Mason writes that literature tells "us that we are seen, warts and all. Criticism, such as the essays in this book, is a way of seeing back"'-- Publisher's website.
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